YouthNet's research agenda is designed to identify policy and programmatic interventions that are likely to improve adolescent reproductive health and HIV/AIDS outcomes. This includes improving our understanding of the contextual factors that support or encourage risk-taking among specific vulnerable or marginalized youth populations.
As a key component of providing global technical leadership, YouthNet puts a high priority on gathering strategic information to improve youth reproductive health and HIV (RH/HIV) programs. Through a collaborative process early in the project, YouthNet identified important and unanswered questions related to youth reproductive health and HIV issues of programmatic relevance that would benefit from evaluations or operations research. As a result, YouthNet's research studies are grouped into three thematic areas: